CHAPTER II. A Historical Sketch. Scarred by the brand of the blinding heat, The path of history is like the course of a river,.. which, broad and clear, with well-defined limits where it nears the abodes of men, when traced backwards winds and narrows, and finally hides its source in some dark forest or inaccessible mountain defile. This is emphatically the case with the history of Benares. The student has not far pursued the backward path before he finds himself baffled and perplexed by the scanty materials for knowledge, and very early-tooearly-the course of the history is lost in the tangled jungle of fable and legend wherein are hidden the origins of all things Indian. By marking off the history into periods not too rigidly limited one may perhaps hope to compass the city's story. The first is the legendary or Pre-Buddhistic period whose hither limit is the rise of the religion of Pre-Buddhistic Period, up to 550 B. C. Gautama Buddha, some five and a half centuries before our era. Doubtless for long before that time there had been a city of shrines here, for to it, as to a centreof light and leading, journeyed the great teacher after his enlightenment "to set in motion the wheel of the excellent law." The so-called records of that fabled time fill many pages of the later Sanscrit literature, and the Kashi Khanda of the Skanda Purána may be considered as the store house of legends of Benares. But the Puranas are among the latest of the shastras or sacred books, and have no historical value. One such legend may be here given as a specimen, in which the origin of the city is attributed to the creative power of Vishnu, exerted in honor of the great deity Shiva. "The seven rishis approached Vishnu and desired to be shown the certain road to salvation. Vishnu, after some meditation, created a linga which shone in glorious effulgence. The linga at its birth was only a span wide but it gradually diffused itself till it covered space, its radius being panch kos (ten miles). This was Kashi. The world at this time was a collection of surging and heaving waters, and the linga stood unmoved on the surface of the deep. Vishnu, however arrived at the conclusion that the place was too small for the abode of the rishis, and consequently created the earth and placed it in juxtaposition to and surrounding the linga. Legends of this character are readily accepted and implicitly believed in by the devout Hindu, and one may occasionally see in the temple courts crowds seated at the feet of some priest, and listening in rapt attention, while tales of this sort are read to them in sonorous Sanscrit. There is a history hidden in the names of the city. Káshi, or Kási, as is well known, is the religious name of the city, although it is admitted that Benares, in its ancient form of Váránasi, is an older name. It is now apparently agreed that one of the earliest of the Hindu kingdoms, that of the Kásis, had Váránasi for a time at least, for its capital. The name of the rulers clung to their principal city after they themselves had passed into oblivion and in later times it has become, with an honorific affix, the name used by devout Hindus all over India, and Kashi ji whenever uttered awakens feelings of religious fervour in the minds of true believers. It is probable that Benares is on the site of a considerable city founded or discovered by the Aryan invaders soon after they left the Punjab, and, situated as it is, on a lofty bank overlooking the river with a sacred sangam, or river junction, north and south of it, very early grew into religious importance. Its situation also in the midst of an agricultural and therefore, wealthy and peaceable community, remote from the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhyas in the south, where wars with the aborigines so long persisted, must have tended to make it early the abode of the saint and the scholar, and the refuge of the devotee and pilgrim. In all probability too Benares saw the rise of Brahmanism out of the old Vedic religion, for it was a great city when, according to Max Müller, the law of rite and ceremony in the Brahmanas, and the philosophic dreams of the Upanishads, were produced. Probably for over three thousand years the priest and philosopher have sat side by side in Benares, and together have elaborated that close woven web of faith and practice in which the Hindu mind is today enmeshed. The vision of that early past is dim, but enticing, and it floats before the eye like the picture in some magic crystal. When Babylon was an upstart state contending with lordly Nineveh, and the early Jewish heroes and kings were welding the Israelitish tribes into a nation; while the Phoenician barks were yet content to plough the sheltered Mediterranean not yet daring to attempt the white cliffs of Albion; while the Grecian communities were slowly and jealously forming themselves into commonwealths and Athens was hardly more than a name, and Rome not yet thought of, here in this quiet retreat, by the calm flowing Ganges and amid the teeming, fruitful plains, dwelt thoughtful seers and proud priests, and hither to worship at a hundred shrines toiled streams of wistful pilgrims. Things were then much as they are to-day and the gymnosophists, or naked philosophers, who amazed Alexander's soldiers were Own brothers to Mrs. Steele's hero, "In the Permanent Way.' Buddhistic Period 550 B. C.-750 A. D. But the priest predominated over the seer as the temples overshadowed the monasteries, and thus came about that great change in religious practice which indirectly gives gives us us our first historical glimpse of Benares. There is no doubt that Gautama, called the Buddha, the sage of the Sákya tribe, headed a revolt against too much ceremony. A prince of the warrior caste, born a hundred miles north of Benares at Kapilavasthu, and enlightened at Gáya, a hundred miles to the south, he came to Benares about the middle of the sixth century B. C., about the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem from captivity. Thus Benares was in all probability not only the place where Hinduism was elaborated into Bráhmanism, but also the birth place of that other world religion, Buddhism. The mild and gentle teacher took up his abode at the Isipattana Vihar, a monastery in a deer park to the north of the present city, now known as Sárnáth, where masses of broken brick and one solitary tower mark the place of former greatness and power. For a long time a spirit of tolerance seems to have marked both the old and the new sect for we know that both existed side by side for many centuries. The influence too of the great Buddhist monarch Asoka, who ruled at Patna not two hundred miles away, about 250 B. C., must have been powerfully felt here. Buddhist pilgrims from the lands further East to which the new faith had been carried found their toilsome way to the shrine of their faith, and two of them have helped to lift the veil on the past. The Chinese devotees, Fa Hian at the beginning of the 5th century and Hiouen Thsang in the 7th, came to obtain manuscripts of their scriptures, and fragmentary accounts of their travels are found in the Chinese classics. They found Benares a great city with a wealthy and peaceful population, full of temples and statues of the gods, and crowded with devotees as to-day. "Families of very great wealth whose houses are stored with rare and precious things, are to be seen. The people are gentle and polished and esteem most highly men given to study. Of the devotees we read, "Some cut off the hair; others reserve a tuft upon the crown, go naked and are destitute of any kind of clothing. Some besmear their bodies with ashes. This was thirteen hundred years ago, and yet is a true picture of Benares to-day. Hiouen Thsang, pious Buddhist though he was, goes on to say that though "there are thirty (Buddhist) monasteries containing about three thousand devotees," yet, "there are a hundred temples of the Hindu gods and about ten thousand heretics," these last being evidently Hindus. Buddhism was then fast declining but its splendour was still great. Out of all the magnificent temples, porches, chapels, monasteries, towers and statues that then met the pilgrims' eyes, and marked the power and wealth of Buddhism what now remains? As one stands on the mound of shattered bricks, under the shadow of the ruined tower of Sárnáth, Wren's proud epitaph comes to mind, but with how sad a meaning! "Si monumentum quaeris, Circumspice." Examine the carved face of that massive tower! Go to the bamboo grove at Bakariya Kund where, desecrated by alien tombs, stands a perfect specimen of a Buddhist temple! Observe the defaced columns and richly carved architraves of the old Buddhist portico now known as the mosque of the Ganj Shahid! Search the byways and alleys of the Mussulmán quarter to the north of the city for carved stones and forgotten shrines, and in these you will find all that is left of the mighty faith which once, for over a thousand |